C# Memory keeps increasing when firing MIDI-events processed by DryWetMidi

Question

I am currently working with the DryWetMidi package to control the KORG nanoKONTROL2 MIDI board with C#/.Net and I noticed that the memory of my application will increase when I fire a lot of MIDI messages (in other words: when I move the faders a lot).

For inspection purposes, I wrote this simple code, which basically does nothing but initializing the DryWetMidi package to start listening to MIDI messages send by my device. Then I have 100 seconds to try out various faders/buttons/knobs (and send a lot of MIDI messages)

static async Task Main(string[] args)
{
    InputDevice nano = InputDevice.GetByName("nanoKONTROL2");
    nano.StartEventsListening();

    Console.WriteLine("start");
    for (int i = 1; i < 101; i++)
    {
        await Task.Delay(1000);
        Console.WriteLine(i + " seconds passed");
    }
    Console.WriteLine("end");

    nano.StopEventsListening();
    nano.Dispose();

}

The memory starts increasing by approx. 15MB when I move the faders a lot. The memory only increases when I move anything (when the board sends MIDI messages)! Since the memory does not increase further after these 15MB, I assume that there are some logging processes going on in the background? Or is it some kind of memory leak?

Now my question:

Is there any way to prevent this memory increase?

Answer 1

I'm the author of the DryWetMIDI library. I've passed MIDI events receiving through .NET memory profiler and here my conclusions:

1. Yes, memory increased due to new instances of MidiEvent class created by DryWetMIDI when new data arrived from a device.
2. GC works as expected. If memory not released, then GC thinks it's not needed right now. In my tests I sent a lot of note events, memory grows and then released.

I don't see any problems. There are no memory leaks and of course there is no any logging within the library. What you see is how .NET memory management works.